Talk To Spooky!
by Purple Mongoose
Summary: [JtHM/IZ] An adult Dib is trying to find information about his mother, and somehow lands himself in a very strange city with a hyperactive girl, a homicidal maniac, and a paranoid woman...[heh] [Working On]
1. Merrily Falling Backwards - Why Family T...

Talk To Spooky!  
*  
Chapter One: Merrily Falling Backwards - Why Family Trees Suck  
  
Dib had been a mere five years old when the seed, as it was said, had been planted in his head. His mother had died when he was only three years in age, amidst giving birth to his younger sister Gaz, so he had absolutely no recollection of her at all. The one time he had asked his father about his mother, he had been given a brief, quick sentence: "She looked like your sister." Even at the age of two, his younger sister was the scariest being he had ever come into contact with, so that simple answer had scared him off of the topic for a suitably long time. Say, oh, ten years.  
  
In any case, the seed was planted. Sure, it disturbed him for quite a few years, but it told him something. He would need to find out about her on his own.   
  
He assumed that had something to do with why exactly he was stuck on a bus from hell, with two suitcases of personal belongings and his beloved, battered laptop happily perched on his thighs, suitcases in the overhead bin. There was something to be said about traveling at night; his thin person was the only one on the bus, discounting the bus driver, and he was beginning to worry she might fall asleep at the wheel. The woman looked as if she'd been given a sugar high, then force-fed caffeine and deprived of rest for ninety-six hours straight. Leaning forward a little, he squinted through his large, thin glasses, trying to make sure she wasn't already dozing off at the wheel. No, he determined after a bit, she was still fighting it, but he didn't want to take any chances. Besides, it was 1:53 AM according to his watch, and even if he was an insomniac, he needed to sleep at least twenty-four hours a week. Maybe more, if he could find the time.  
  
Reaching up, he pulled the 'brake' wire, and an obnoxiously loud bell exploded with sound in the front of the bus. The bus driver started up, cursed, swerved for no apparent reason other than seeking cruel revenge by nearly throwing him from one side of the bus to the other, and finally braked abruptly. His chin slammed into the seat in front of him, his suitcases both fell out of the overhead bin, and he thanked God that his laptop hadn't hit anything. "Thou shalt not piss off tired bus drivers," he muttered to himself, tucking his laptop under his arm and grabbing a suitcase handle in each hand. Plastering a false smile on his face, he nodded a good-bye to the driver, and slowly eased his way off of the bus; the split second his feet touched pavement, the bus took off at an unholy speed, and he was nearly tipped over onto his face. As it was, his laptop, saved mysteriously on the bus from destruction, slipped from under his arm and clattered noisily on the sidewalk. "Aw, shit," Dib sighed, dropping his suitcases carelessly and snatching up his laptop. "I should've driven myself."  
  
After a few minutes of careful, worried checking of his laptop's well being, he regretfully fastened it around his neck and once more picked up his suitcases. He really hoped he could find an apartment here...his recent encounters with the public transportation system had been rather harrowing, and he didn't really want to move for a month. Just rent some apartment room, crash there for a week or five...  
  
  
  
|squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek|  
  
"Don't be silly, Spooky!" Tenna giggled, her spiky black hair gelled up vertically. "Of course I'll let you watch 'Mysterious Mysteries' with me!" She smiled happily at the tiny, chubby skeleton rubber toy she held in her hand, squeezing it two quick times.  
  
|squeeksqueeeek|  
  
"Yeah, I think they need a new host, too. That guy's getting kinda old for it." Prancing up the stairs, the dark-skinned girl turned to her left blithely, a silly grin on her face. Upon turning, she ran straight into the slender back of a tall man with black hair in a unique, scythe-like hairstyle.   
  
However, considering she bounced right off of his back and landed painfully on her rear end, she was not in a position to note this. The force of her running into him sent the man face first into the blue-painted wood of the door he was standing in front of, his black laptop falling to the carpeted floor with a 'thud.' "Not my laptop!" he wailed, after prying his face from the door.   
  
Indignant, Tenna sat up, squeezing Spooky angrily. The result was a high-pitched |squeeek!!| that startled the man and echoed her sentiments. "Big-headed man, watch where you're going!" she yelled, clutching her toy to her chest defensively. "You could have crushed Spooky with your enormous cranium if you had fallen the other way!"  
  
Slowly, he turned to look at her, his face contorted in an odd expression. "My head," he hissed, still staring at her, "is not...big!"  
  
She tilted her head to one side and considered his reply. "Yes, it is," she finally said, nodding affirmatively. "Such a big head you have, blade-hair-man."  
  
He blinked. "What?"   
  
"Do you like ramen noodles?" she asked out of nowhere, head still tilted to one side.   
  
He blinked again, harder, his eyebrows wrinkling together in confusion. "Yeah...I guess."  
  
"Oh, good!" Tenna clapped her hands together, forgetting she was still holding Spooky. A soft |squeek| sounded and she patted the toy's head reassuringly. "Do you like taco sauce?"  
  
This time, his eyes twitched once. "Yes..."  
  
"That's nice! Have a good sleep, big-headed-blade-hair-man!" With that, she stood up, waved, and bounced down the hallway, humming cheerfully.  
  
Dib Membrane stared at the spot she had been sitting on and opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again. "What the hell?" he questioned the air, brown eyes decidedly bewildered behind his glasses. He was silent, then whirled around, his black trenchcoat flapping a bit. "My head isn't big!" he snarled. "And what does taco sauce have to do with anything?!"  
  
The door next to his just-rented apartment flew open, and an irate middle-aged woman stuck her head out and yelled a horrible expletive at him. His eyes bugged and his jaw dropped as the woman glared, her face covered in some horrid, frightening green goo. "Why can't you people move in quietly?!" She slammed the door and he blinked once again.  
  
"This is way too early for this kind of crap," he groaned, fishing the key out of his pocket and unlocking his apartment door, kicking his suitcases inside the room. With much more care, he grasped his laptop and entered himself, closing the door behind him.  
  
  
  
"Spooky and I met our new neighbor last night!" Tenna said with a bright smile, and Spooky made an affirming noise when she squeezed its tiny rubber stomach. Devi paused in her painting just for a moment, looking curiously at her rather...unique friend. "He's cute, but he's really rude. He was standing in the middle of the hallway, where anybody could run right into him!" Devi rolled her eyes and resumed painting. Tenna twirled Spooky between her fingers, smiling still. "He likes ramen noodles and taco sauce." She nodded to herself. "He told me so, right before he yelled that he didn't have a big head."  
  
Devi paused again. "Gee, Tenna," she remarked dryly, "you just make friends everywhere you go, don't you?" Seeing her open her mouth to actually answer, the artist quickly interjected, "It's a rhetorical question, Tenna! You don't answer it!"  
  
"Then why did you ask it?" Tenna replied with a 'you're-so-silly' tone of voice. "Questions are s'posed to be answered!" She smiled to herself and happily squeezed Spooky several times, nodding her head reflectively. "Yeah, isn't Devi so silly?"  
  
It's not worth hitting her, Devi reminded herself. It's not worth it, it's not worth it, it's not worth it...  
  
"Whatcha painting, Devi?" Tenna's voice spooked her, and she almost smeared her paintbrush across the figure she was slowly defining. "Is it someone you know?" she continued, pulling her legs up on the stool she was sitting on, tucking her feet under her calves. "'Cause it looks really good and all."  
  
Devi, for the first time, actually focused on the painting; she hadn't really thought of what she was creating on the canvas, having just started with some vague, shadowed image in her head. A certain amount of self-directed anger swelled up as she realized exactly what it was: her greatest, worst date, Johnny C. "Oh, God," she muttered, dropping her paintbrush in disgust and smacking her forehead, accidentally streaking blue paint all over her face as she dragged her hand down. "Why is he haunting me?" she whispered quietly, not wanting the other woman to overhear. He'd tried to cut her open, and she kicked his psychotic ass, and now she was painting him! Damn! She bit her lip angrily and glared at the half-finished portrait as if it was its fault.  
  
Tenna, in complete contrast, fell off the stool cackling, Spooky falling beside her. Her foot knocked the stool and it creaked ominously before catching Devi's own stool, dragging her down as well. "Smurfette!" howled Tenna, kicking her legs happily in the air. "Devi's a Smurfette!"   
  
The unappreciative Devi propped herself up, pushing the stools off of her shins. "Go away, Tenna," she scowled. "And stop doing that!"  
  
"But your face is bluuuuue, like Smurfette, and Papa Smurf, and all the other Smurf people!"  
  
"Go away!" Devi shrieked, waving her arms at her best friend, face livid behind the blue paint. "Please! Go...bug the new guy or something!"  
  
"Fine," sniffed Tenna, standing up with a haughty air as she cradled Spooky. "If you don't want me around," she pressed dramatically, "then I'll just leave." She beamed suddenly. "'Bye!" With that, she skipped out of the apartment, vanishing into the hallway.  
  
Devi groaned and dropped her head with a dull 'thunk.'  
  
  
  
He was having the most wonderful dream. Zim was tied up to an examination table, and his father was actually talking to him...Gaz was being sweet and a tall feminine figure with dark purple hair was standing next to her...their mother? He was accepting some huge science-y award he couldn't remember the name of in the haze of sleepiness, and there was an annoying voice singing right outside his apartment door...  
  
"Shut-up!" Dib grabbed his pillow, smashed it over his head, and proceeded to growl as the obliviously happy voice continued singing. "Shut the hell up!" he half-whined, half-roared.  
  
"Youuuuuu have got to have the bluuuuest eyes I've ever seeeeen," the voice warbled, switching songs, "and when I wake from dreamin', I am screamin' out yo' naaaame!"  
  
Several more minutes passed as the voice continued singing and Dib attempted to destroy his hearing before he lost it in a more painful manner. Finally, he sat up and moved to stand up on the floor by the bed; his legs, unfortunately, were wrapped up in the sheets. He tripped, became intimately acquainted with the floor, and somehow managed to stumble to the door. Upon reaching it, he unlocked the deadbolt and threw the door open, not caring that the sheets were still stubbornly tangled about his legs. Peering through the fog of sleepiness and lack of glasses, he tried to appear as foreboding and dangerous as he could.   
  
This illusion was quickly shattered as a very female whistle came admiringly from the petite, grinning dark girl standing before him. "Ooo, you have a yummy chest!" she remarked quite cheerfully and carelessly, hugging her rubber toy skeleton to her chest. "Wish I'd gotten to see that last night!"  
  
"You!" he gasped, and then slipped on the sheets, falling gracelessly on his back. His already red face turned an even brighter shade of crimson as the girl-woman giggled, batting her eyelashes at him. "You're a demon!"  
  
"No," she said, shaking her head with a frown. "I'm your neighbor!" She thrust her hand out at him as he tried to unknot the sheets from around his legs. "Hi! I'm Tenna, and this," with her other hand, she jabbed the rubber skeleton into his face, bending over so she was closer to him, "is Spooky!"   
  
|squeek|  
  
"Spooky says hi!"  
  
"Well, hello, Spooky, I'm Dib," he greeted sardonically. "I don't suppose you have a pair of earplugs?"  
  
Tenna blinked cutely. "Earplugs? Why would you need earplugs?"  
  
"Figure it out," he sighed, standing up and stiffly turning around, walking back into his apartment, praying that she could take a hint and would leave...  
  
"You've got lots of trenchcoats," she remarked right behind him, and he gritted his teeth, turning to see, fuzzily, that she was bending over his half-unpacked suitcases. "And lots of black pants, and boots, and cool black shirts...with alien faces!" He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, prayed for patience for his nerve endings, and despairingly trudged over to the bed, plucking his glasses up from the bedside table and putting them on quickly. To his absolute horror, he did so at the exact moment she tossed Spooky at him; the toy caught him square in the gut, and he was startled at the force the damn thing had hit him. As if to top it off, or mock him in some twisted way, she unfolded one of his shirts and tucked it between her knees, stripping her own shirt off. Sudden blood flow to his head caused unexpected dizziness and he was more than a little thankful that she was wearing a brassiere. Spooky squeeked knowingly and Dib didn't even think on how it had done that without being squished. Shock was quickly replaced by outrage as she tugged HIS shirt over her head. "Alien!" she told him happily, pointing to the little face.   
  
"That's my shirt!" he protested, tossing her toy back to her.  
  
"Spooky!" she yelped, diving forward to catch it. "You're evil! You threw poor Spooky!" He blinked several times as she petted the toy's head, making what he thought were cooing sounds.  
  
"So did you," he finally pointed out, grabbing the trenchcoat he had discarded by the bed the night before, slipping it on and buttoning it up quickly.  
  
"That's completely different," she whimpered, continuing to pet it.   
  
Dib exhaled, exasperated, and stood up again, walking to his laptop where it was resting on the floor. Sitting on the carpet before it, he shifted his weight a few times, placing a long leg on each side of the laptop, knees bent up. "Could you leave?" he asked absently, attitude quickly switching. "I'm working."  
  
"On what?" she asked right back, and he started. When had she gotten right behind him?  
  
"Uh," he stared at her, "...stuff..." Was she an alien? He could almost swear she had teleported.   
  
"Aliens?" Tenna wrinkled her eyebrows, clutching Spooky protectively. "Bigfoot? Whassat about?"  
  
"I'm a paranormal investigator," he sighed, not for the first time, and steeled his self for the mockery and laughter.  
  
"Cool!" She clapped her hands together. "Do you get to talk to ghosts and stuff like that? Are you here 'cause a giant alien worm is slowly eating the brainmeats of the mayor? Are we on the verge of a horrible, doomy doom-like apocalypse-type thingy?"  
  
He stared. "...No. I'm trying to find information about my mother," he answered slowly.  
  
"Oh." Tenna almost sounded disappointed, and even Spooky seemed to droop a bit in the crook of her arm; she sighed, very slowly. "I wish there was a giant alien worm slowly eating the brainmeats of the mayor," she confessed in a confidential tone. "He's mean and he spits when he talks."  
  
"That's...nice," Dib said, one eye widening a little. "So, why are you still here?"   
  
"Oh, yeah!" she brightened, grabbing his collar and jerking him to his feet, all but dragging him out of his apartment. "I'm giving you a tour of the city!"  
  
"W-what?" he squeaked. "Don't I get a say in this?"  
  
She thought for a moment. "Mmmm...no." Tenna hauled him off.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Heh. There's the first chapter, folks, and I realize it isn't that good. But keep in mind that it all it's doing is setting up the premise for the story! I have to do this, you know. Anyway, I wrote this in Comic Sans MS, size 10, and the chapter was seven pages long. Whoo. So, I hope you'll stick around for more, as I plan to update this quickly. There are four more chapters planned, and I'd really like it if I could get some reviews on this. After all, I'm not subscribed to the advanced author thing right now, so I can't see how many people are reading my fics. Please review?  
  
I know Dib was OOC, but this is a prelude-like chapter-thingy. Yeah. Next one will be about 20 pages with the same font&size, so that should be a good size for everyone. Don't thank me all at once! *winks* I'm designing a webpage for this fic and its planned sequel (I already have a sequel planned! *screams*), so it'll look better on the webpage once I get it up. Mmm-hmm.   
  
Once again, please review! Pleasepleaseplease? Oh, and my Nny plushie says hi. He's getting calmer now that I've taken away his knives.  
  
Next chappy: While Dib, Tenna, and, uh, Spooky are out, they run into everyone's favorite Irken, his slightly unhinged robot, and Dib's intimidating sister. Nny decides to show up for undetermined reasons, and the writer is trying to figure it all out without losing the bits and pieces of her remaining sanity.  
  
First chapter needs editing...but review anyway!]  
  
  
[EDIT ONE: Okay, so, once I finished writing the fourth chapter and posted it, I went back to reread Chappy the First. Found an age error. I listed Dib as being one when his mother died and three when he asked about her; in Chappy the Fourth, I stated that Dib was three when his mother died. Therefore, I changed the stuff in this chappy so that it fit Chapter 4. And I suppose Gaz is just a genius, if she's a grade under Dib and she's three years younger than he. *winks* I mean, hey, she told Devi she's earning a master's in physics and chemistry in Ch.4!] 


	2. Eat or Die - How To Eat Killer Ramen Noo...

Talk To Spooky!  
*  
Chapter Two: Eat or Die - How To Eat Killer Ramen Noodles  
  
"Evil burning sun of doom!"   
  
Gaz rolled her eyes and planted her pale hand firmly on GIR's head, stopping the joyously squealing robot from running into the brick wall they were walking alongside. The robot's idiotic green dog costume drooped a little before GIR recovered and latched onto her arm, clambering up it to rest on her shoulder. She decided against knocking the oddly cute thing to the ground and simply sufficed with trying to control her growing impatience with Zim. "For God's sake," she muttered, "of all the stupid universal constants..."  
  
Zim rotated the map for the second time in the past half-minute and scratched his forehead, scowling at the paper whilst cursing the sun a few more times under his breath. He absolutely refused to stoop so low as to ask for directions from a pathetic human worm-baby!  
  
"Of course," Gaz commented in her usual dark voice, even if the years of puberty had made it a bit higher in pitch, "he's too dense to ask for directions for a completely different reason than most guys." GIR thought for all of a half-second about that, then started singing 'The Barney Song' at the top of its tinny, high-pitched voice. Gaz's eye twitched. "Oh, you enjoy that," she hissed, voice darkening, "for I will never permit you to do such ever again, GIR!"   
  
A passing girl dressed in tight jeans and a shirt composed mostly of two straps tied together gave the trio a weird looks. "Freaks," she muttered, and Gaz's other eye started twitching as well.  
  
"What devilry is this navigational tool?" Zim bellowed. "It is untranslatable!"  
  
"Men," Gaz muttered again, stepping forward and whipping it out of his gloved hands. "We need to turn here," she pointed at one of the little angles on it and Zim glared. "Dib called Dad last night to tell him where he was staying and that he was perfectly fine." She glanced at Zim, who had started violently twitching at the name of her brother. "Dad's been acting strange since Dib decided to find out about Mom."  
  
"Do you think I care about the foolish drooly-worm-baby that is your brother and the equally foolish thoughts that fill his unbelievably large skull?"   
  
"..."  
  
"IwannaBrainFreeeeeezyyyyyy!"  
  
"Not now, GIR," Zim snapped, and the robot paused, staring with the eerie beady eyes of its disguise. "Gaz and I are busy having a normal, perfectly human conversation that is in no way unusual!" The woman rolled her brown eyes again.  
  
GIR remained silent, continuing to stare. Gaz thought she heard a soft whining sound that gradually grew higher and louder in pitch, before she realized it was coming from the robot still perched on her shoulder. Said robot took a flying leap off of her shoulder, landing on the ground on its back where it began screaming and wailing. "I wanna BrainFreezy!" it howled.  
  
"So, tell me again why we are tracking your moronic sibling again?" questioned Zim, completely ignoring GIR's rolling across the sidewalk, still screaming.   
  
"Because," she replied darkly, the sky behind her inexplicably darkening and lightning flickering once or twice, "he is trying to locate our mother's family as well as information about her. You know Dib as I do: he will hold it as blackmail over my head in compliance with the laws of sibling relations. He shall not be permitted to do so!" A tremendous lightning flash struck a building somewhere far behind her and a trail of smoke started slowly climbing into the sky, which was rapidly brightening.  
  
As Zim blinked, suitably disturbed by her suddenly evil countenance, GIR continued to roll about, screaming unintelligibly.   
  
"All...right," he blinked again. "I suppose that is an understandable reason to track him." He switched his attention to the temper-tantrum GIR was throwing. "GIR! Cease that at once! We must stop a human public transportation unit in order to board it!"  
  
GIR's color scheme flickered from aquamarine into red and it leapt up to its feet, saluting Zim. Then, with the red flickering straight back into aquamarine, it quite blissfully ran into the brick wall.  
  
  
  
Tenna had decided she was not going to ask where Dib had pulled an alien shirt from, as he was wearing one when she glanced back after pulling him out of the apartment building. Instead, she was going to focus on enjoying spending an entire day with a rather cute man who was completely at her mercy. And Spooky's, she amended. Mustn't forget Spooky. She released her grip on his collar, looping her arm through his and continuing to drag him along thusly.  
  
He's cute, she thought with a giggle. And he's got really cool clothes, too, and his job's ultra-nifty! He's perfect!  
  
Dib's thoughts were much different, most on how he was going to escape the oddly powerful grip of the small woman he was trailing behind. "Where are you taking me?" he asked desperately.  
  
"The mall, of course!" she told him with a brilliant smile. "There's all sorts of stores and restaurants there, and the big fancy buildings are along the way to it! See, right over there," she pointed across the street, to their left, "is the historical museum, and they give away free ice cream every Tuesday if you go to the exhibits." She tugged on his arm and he reluctantly came up so that he was walking alongside her. "Over there," she continued, pointing past the museum, "is the skool, which doesn't give away free ice cream and has really gross food. If you EVER visit for any reason, stay away from anything with the word 'mystery,' 'meat,' or 'taco' in the name. I think they bribe the health inspector."  
  
"Well, that's something I didn't really need to know," Dib said, forcing back the flashbacks of high school cafeteria food. "Or remember, for that matter."  
  
"And there's the building where all the funny men and women who look like they bathe in starch go, and then there's the mayor's house, and the library." She took a breath.  
  
|squeeek| A pause. |squeeksqueek|  
  
"You're absolutely right, Spooky! I forgot to ask Dib if he had breakfast!" Tenna turned her head to face him, tilting her face up to him. "Did you get breakfast?"  
  
"What do you think?" he grumbled.  
  
"Okey-dokey! What d'you want to eat, Spooky?" She lifted her toy so that it was in front of both her and Dib, who was trying his hardest to look like he wasn't with her, which wasn't easy considering her arm was interlocked with his. It felt like he was losing blood circulation below his elbow.  
  
|squeeksqueeeek!|  
  
"Oh, that's a wonderful idea, Spooky!" she cheered, hugging it happily. "C'mon, Dib, Spooky wants to eat at 'Eat or Die!'" She pulled insistently on his arm, and Dib had a nauseating feeling of sinking horror as well as a realization that he really was losing circulation below his elbow.  
  
"What kind of restaurant is called 'Eat or Die?!'" he demanded as the oblivious young woman dragged him down the sidewalk.  
  
  
  
"'Eat or Die?'" Zim said slowly, one eye slightly larger than the other. "What in the name of the Earth hell is that?"  
  
"Food," Gaz replied automatically. "Specifically, Chinese food, which translates as junk food." Her eyelids opened and her brown eyes grew into bubbly, unnaturally sparkly feminine ones. "We must eat here," she sighed, tone of voice loving.  
  
"Oooo, grape lady pretty!" GIR gushed, latching onto her leg. She didn't notice, walking as she was as if in a trance, pushing the doors open and still smiling serenely. "Prettyprettypretty---BrainFreezy!"  
  
Zim hunched his shoulders and glanced about carefully, casually walking after the two into the restaurant. Upon his entering, he discovered a bored looking teenaged girl snapping her bubblegum as Gaz's fingers twitched dangerously. GIR, still in his doggie costume, was prancing around the small welcome mat inside the place, singing an Irish bar song off-key.   
  
"Look, lady," the girl snapped her gum again, her face ghoulish with the obscene amount of make-up she wore, "we don't let dogs in this establishment."  
  
Gaz's fingers were twitching more so, and, much as Zim would be gleeful at seeing the hostess screaming and running, he couldn't waste any more time. He really didn't want to admit to being hungry, especially for earth food, but there was little choice. Odds were, after Gaz was done with traumatizing the hostess, she would attempt to use Zim as a stress reliever, which would most likely involve forks, knives, and blunt objects that would leave him scarred. So, he did the unthinkable and said the first thing that popped into his mind. "This isn't a dog," he explained quickly, "he's our son."  
  
Gaz's eyeballs bulged and GIR stopped prancing and singing to bring a paw to its mouth. Then, causing Gaz's eyes to bulge even more, it glomped onto her slender leg, happily shrieking, "I luv ya, Mama!"  
  
"Your son?" the teenager squealed, her temperament switching from bored disdain to 'awww-ain't-he-cute?'   
  
"Yes," Zim said stiffly, trying to appear casual, while praying to the Irken God of Mercy that Gaz wouldn't use him as a ritualistic sacrifice. "He is our perfectly human son. Is he not absolutely normal and un-canine?"  
  
"Awww, isdawiddleboycuuuuute?" the teenager was cooing, kneeling in front of GIR and clasping her hands together.  
  
"I luv my Mama!" it declared proudly in its high voice, rubbing its cheek against Gaz's leg.   
  
"Might we be seated, pathetic slave human?" interjected Zim hastily. "Quickly, before sealing mold closes about our feet and locks us perpetually to this shiny white floor surface!"  
  
"Yes, he is! Yes, he is!" the teenager continued to coo, leading the trio to a booth in the front.   
  
"You will be spared today," Gaz whispered sinisterly as they followed the girl, "but only because the greasy ramen noodles call me."  
  
Zim appeared nonchalant, and GIR giggled insanely.  
  
  
  
Dib studied the menu before him and wondered briefly if ordering something called 'Chicken Ramen Noodles of Fiery, Painful Doom' was potentially fatal. Well, once he compared it to 'Highly Flammable, Explody Teriyaki of Mutilation,' he decided it couldn't be too dangerous. Granted, he was worried that he'd never be able to walk again, but a plus side could be that Tenna wouldn't be able to drag him around the city. Of course, he would be completely under her control, as he didn't doubt that she would play nursemaid to him, which might not be too bad...  
  
"You sure you want the 'Doomed, Sparkly Noodles,' Spooky?" Tenna was asking her skeleton toy, and it squeeked mysteriously. "Well, okay, but I'm getting the 'yaki of Mutilation. What about you, Dib?"  
  
I don't want to die, a part of his mind sobbed, and he smiled at her, causing her to blush and giggle mentally. "The 'Chicken Ramen Noodles of Fiery, Painful Doom,'" he said. The sobbing part of his mind screamed and fell silent.  
  
"Yay!" Tenna clapped her hands together, having set Spooky down on one corner of the table. "That's a good choice! Want a banana?"  
  
"What?" He stared at her. "Excuse me?"  
  
"Do you want a banana?" she pressed.  
  
"Huh? Why would I want a banana?" He wrinkled his eyebrows.  
  
"Do you want one?" she said patiently.  
  
"Why are you asking me this?" Dib responded, confusion on his face.  
  
"Are you upset?" Tenna asked, and Dib looked even more bewildered. "You look upset. You...hmmm...you need to...talk to Spooky!" The confused paranormal investigator found Spooky suddenly jabbed at his face, its little white skull an inch from his nose.   
  
"I don't want to talk to Spooky," he blinked.   
  
"Talk to Spooky!" she insisted, shaking it a little.  
  
"I don't want to talk to Spooky," he repeated, a tic starting to form above his eye.  
  
"Talk to Spooky," she repeated as well, stubbornly.  
  
"I don't want to talk to Spooky!"  
  
"Talk to Spooky, damnit!"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Does this mean you don't want a banana?" Tenna asked thoughtfully.  
  
Dib slammed his face into the table, mumbling incoherently, and Spooky squeeked sympathetically.  
  
"Food's here!" Tenna's voice filled the air with all of its overflowing happiness and Dib slowly raised his head, glancing suspiciously at his noodles.   
  
"Well, they don't look dangerous," he admitted slowly, shoving the unusual conversation into the back of his mind. "I...think."  
  
"Of course they're not dangerous!" Tenna said through a mouthful of teriyaki that she swallowed carefully. "The cook's only given nine people food poisoning!"  
  
Dib choked on his noodles and grabbed at one of the glasses of water thankfully placed on the table. Drowning the noodles in his mouth and gulping it down quickly, he looked at her in horror.  
  
"I'm kidding," she laughed, poking him slightly with her fork on his shoulder. "You're way too serious!"  
  
"And you're an idi--" he started angrily without thinking, and then broke off abruptly, cheeks reddening. Well, gee, Dib, that was smooth...  
  
"Idiot?" Tenna finished, her perpetual smile vanishing. Dib could almost swear he heard Spooky softly squeek something that resembled 'bumbumBUM.' His insides churned, and he was 99% sure it wasn't the food; as much as she annoyed him, he hadn't meant to hurt her feelings. "Well," she said quietly, idly stabbing her fork into a piece of her meal and letting go of the handle. She hooked her hands on the edge of the seat, ducking her head a little.   
  
"I...I'm sorry?" he offered weakly. Shitshitshit! What if she starts crying? What then, genius?  
  
"Naw, don't apologize," she shrugged, not lifting her head. "Everybody thinks I'm stupid or something, even my best friend, to an extent." She lifted her head, and there was a tiny bit of relief that she wasn't crying. "People always think that if you're happy most of the time. I mean, it's like you can't possibly be happy constantly without being stupid, or insane, or, or, or...something." She shrugged again, grinning at him. "I'm smart, you know, and I'm perfectly sane, too. Just 'cause I can understand and talk with Spooky doesn't mean I'm a nut. I can understand lots of other things and I can talk with them, too, but it hurts to do that. Not with Spooky. I'm just different from other people."  
  
Dib blinked, grinning back at her. "Are we having a serious conversation?"  
  
"Yeah. Not normal, but serious," she laughed. Sobering, Tenna continued, "Y'know when you're little, and you can see things and talk to things that grown-ups can't? How you know your toys are alive and you just know with all your heart that they understand you? That's kind of what it's like for me, only...sort of different.   
  
"Whenever I say stuff that doesn't really make sense, it's not because I'm stupid, or whatever it is that people think I am. I just have a short attention span, and I'm kinda hyperactive, but most people don't think adults can be like that. Heh." She snickered.  
  
They were quiet for a few moments, eating carefully, each with their own thoughts.  
  
"I wonder what would happen if the hostess exploded with candy," Tenna remarked, staring at the teenager. "It'd be like a firecracker, only with taffy instead of sparks!"  
  
Dib smiled, shook his head, and laughed quietly. She didn't seem nearly as annoying as he had thought earlier.   
  
"So, how long have you lived on your own?" he began, ignoring the fact that Tenna had started trying to fork 'Doomed, Sparkly Noodles' to Spooky.  
  
Before his question could be answered, a horribly familiar voice hollered, "Looky, Papa, is da Dibby guy!"  
  
  
  
Johnny, having nothing better to do since nobody had really done anything to piss him off and thusly merit being tortured and gruesomely murdered, pushed open the doors for the 'Eat and Die' restaurant. Why he was pulled here of all places, he did not know.  
  
The moment he saw a thin man in an oddly familiar trenchcoat yelling at a tall man with green skin while a little green dog ran around, screaming and laughing maniacally, he wondered why he'd even bothered to leave his room this morning.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Well. I don't think this was a particularly good chapter either, but, eh, that's up to ya'll to decided, isn't it? So tell me by clicking on the little review button-thing! Yes. Click it. You can not resist the clickiness. Cliiiick iiiiit...cliiiick iiiiit...  
  
I'm pretty sure there's OOC-ness all throughout this, and I apologize for it; I also need to send out a HUGE apology for this not being as long as I had planned for it to be. The stupid thing just warped itself into this, and here it is. I'd originally planned for Nny to be in this more, but it was too easy to cut off when he entered the 'Eat or Die' restaurant.  
  
Tenna was fun to write in this chapter, even if her 'I'm different' speech might have rubbed some people the wrong way. Sorry!  
  
Next chapter will be longer! I'll probably be up until midnight writing it tomorrow...  
  
Next chappy: Nny meets Gaz and gets confused, Zim gloats over the fact that Tenna has somehow gotten a power over Dib, Dib meets Devi and gets confused, and GIR is convinced Gaz is his mommy. Tenna decides she's going to make Dib her man while Devi has to deal with Nny - the guy she still loves, but is scared as hell of - and everybody else. Spooky squeeks. Yes, indeed.  
  
Wrote this while listening to Billy Gilman's "One Voice" CD, the "Wedding Singer" soundtrack, and the "Titan A.E." soundtrack. Yessiree.  
  
Nny plushie says: 'Review! Now!']  
  
|Thank-you to ArmandLeg (hope this chapter was still good!), Dib Girl (I updated really quick-like! I talk to my Nny plushie...does that count?), Loriko Neko (wow! *blushes* Fall in love with this story! I won't mind!), Sara (yes, poor, poor Dib, stuck with hyperactive, ADD Tenna...), Bubbles of Doom (more right here! Isn't Doom fun?), Kami and Daegon (I hope this chapter was as fun to read as it was to write), and Sirinial (Spooky played a role in this chappy, too!). Cherry Doom BrainFreezies for all! Oh, and my author account says I have ten reviews, but it will only show seven to me. Fudgies. So, apologies to the three reviewers that I can't see!| 


	3. Pissed Off Gaz - Why You Should Run, Not...

Talk To Spooky!  
*  
Chapter Three: Pissed Off Gaz - Why You Should Run, Not Walk  
  
Johnny C. had seen many odd things in his life: people alive with their lungs outside of their bodies, slender women beating the crud out of him, and Satan with a briefcase and a tacky suit on. While the first wasn't too unusual or odd anymore, for him at least, and the second had only happened once, the third had, so far, been yet to gain a decent rival. As much as he would absolutely love to say what he was currently viewing was as weird as Satan dressed as a car salesman, it quite simply wasn't. To be perfectly honest, it ranked at a mere, ordinary 4.3 on his personal Disturbing-Shit-o-Meter. Still, it was the weirdest thing he'd seen all day, and it wasn't every morning he saw a green man without ears or a nose yell at a thin man wearing a Matrix-meets-Alien outfit. And he couldn't forget the yodeling dog. Not the yodeling dog.  
  
Quietly, he did what he did best: slunk in and found a seat near the door without ever being seen. Okay, so technically it was what he was second best at, but the thought was what counted.   
  
"You're stalking me!" the thin man with the scythe-like hairstyle snarled, his glasses slipping down on his nose minutely.   
  
"No, I am no--" the green-skinned man started, in angry reply, then paused reflectively. "No, you're right, I am stalking you."  
  
"Why?" Scythe-Man all but wailed. "For once in my life, I don't want to prove your alien heritage, I don't care anymore; I'm just trying to find my mother's family!"  
  
"How difficult could that possibly be?" Green-Man mused. "With such an enormous head threatening to eclipse life on this planet, wouldn't it be just so easy to find others with mutated head sizes?"  
  
A third player entered the scene and Johnny tilted his head to one side, dark blue hair shifting a little. Interesting.  
  
The new figure was a spunky-looking black girl with spiky hair; she latched herself immediately onto Scythe-Man and hugged his arm. "Dib's head may be big," she declared stubbornly, "but it is such a cute big head! Isn't it cute?" Scythe-Man, or Dib, turned red as she grabbed his cheeks and pulled his face towards her. "He's such a cutie big head!"  
  
"My head is the same size as Zim's!" he protested, pointing an accusing finger at Green-Man. "Well…sort of!" He seemed to struggle for a moment. "I don't have a large head!" he finally said, glaring.  
  
There was a studied silence following this, broken only by the little dog's happy screeching before it leapt onto a table a young woman was sitting at. Johnny thought she looked a bit familiar, but he couldn't tell: she was obscured by shadows. After a shrug, he turned back to the silent three in front of him.  
  
Dib smiled smugly at Zim, ignoring the fact that, for the second time in an hour, his arm was going numb from Tenna being attached to it.   
  
Zim studied his foe for a moment. "Yes, it is," he said matter-of-factly.  
  
Dib's eyes slitted half-shut, becoming small white crescents behind the large glasses, and he took a deep, calming breath. Then, with great maturity and thought, he smashed his fist into Zim's face, sending Tenna sprawling to the floor, where she squeaked and rubbed at her rear, wailing "My ass! It hurts!" Such an intelligent thing it was she wailed.  
  
Through the mysterious science-y stuff concerning physics, centrifugal force, inertia, and a donkey (just for the hell of it), Zim was caught by the blow and somehow, due to the aforementioned mysterious science-y stuff, sent stumbling back onto the table Johnny was sitting at, resulting with the homicidal maniac instinctively drawing forth a very scary looking blade that was unnervingly shiny and sparkly. Tenna continued to rub her rear, sniffling dramatically as Spooky squeeked desperately from where it had fallen in its 'Doomed, Sparkly Noodles,' the 'Highly Flammable, Explody Teriyaki of Mutilation' currently a smoking hole in the table and an impressively large crater in the floor beneath it. Dib's 'Chicken Ramen Noodles of Fiery, Painful Doom' was beginning to show suspicious signs of internal combustion. Inevitably, its fate would be similar to that of Bruce Willis' character in 'Armageddon.' Moment of silence required in respect of Bruce Willis' character in 'Armageddon.'   
  
Whether or not Zim had any organs other than the oft-spoken of, never seen squeedily spooch would have been discovered very quickly and very painfully if GIR had not performed the most idiotic, suicidal, singly destructive thing in its entire brainless existence: it fell in Gaz's noodles.  
  
While Johnny was watching Dib and Zim's mature, intelligent conversation regarding stalking and Dib's supposedly abnormally humongous head, and Tenna was alternately glomping Dib and rubbing her landing pad, for lack of a not-so-crude word, amidst the unseen exploding of various noodle dishes, Gaz was ignoring them all, blissfully eating her own noodle dish. She was content with the greasy ramen-ness of it, happy with the sweet, unnatural chicken flavor. The world was right and good, a wonderful world of joy, explody noodle happiness, and continuously cheesy monster-catching parodies that are created to sell cheap toys but are nonetheless adored by unsuspecting little children and hated by their money-earning-and-producing parents. Whatever the case, she was feeling as if she, for some oddly uncharacteristic moment, could be friendly and kind.  
  
"Mama!" GIR had yelled lovingly, executing a tremendous flying leap from one side of the round table, performing a perfect 10.0 dive into her noodles, which sprayed up in a heart-wrenching haze that engulfed the table and splattered across her face. "Mama gotta read me a BED-time story, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh!" Somewhere in the background, the hostess babbled inane things most people reserve for their dogs.  
  
Gaz had let Zim slide with the "he's our son" line. She had let GIR be its usual gullible self and believe she was its mother. She had let it attach itself to her, for God's sake! And now...oh, now was where it all crossed the line.   
  
In junior high, during the time period before she began hanging out with Zim more and more often, she had earned a nickname she was quite proud of: 'Queen of Horribly Horrible, Painfully Painful Revenge.' Sure it was repetitive. Sure it was unbelievably moronic and uncreative. Sure it ensured that she would never have a date for the homecoming dance. Sure it messed up her chances of ever having relations with her classmates for the rest of her junior high and high school careers. But it was the truth. Such horrible things she could do to the foolish robot; she could tie it up and poke it with a Teletubby until it screamed for mercy. She could force it to watch "Days of Our Lives" until what little brains it had imploded. Oh, such things she could do.  
  
GIR was, in short, screwed.  
  
And no, not the screw that represented one half of its brain. Intelligence core. Whatever. Nor the kind of screw perverted guys in Tech Lab chortle and laugh about in their sick, twisted, over-sexed hormone-ness. The kind that involves various implements with sharp, hooked ends and large, heavy objects such as binders, books, and widescreen TV's.   
  
With her natural 'find-something-I-can-use-for-destruction-and-vengeance' radar, Gaz quickly spied the nasty, curved machete one homicidal maniac was preparing to use for sudden autopsy on one confused alien. She liked the machete very much. An unholy amount of very much.  
  
"Give me your blade!" she demanded, stalking across the floor from her table, noodles and sauce dripping from her purple hair. Johnny paused momentarily in his thus-far thwarted attempts at stabbing Zim, glanced at Gaz, and did a passable impression of a drunken fish out of water with a cat tap-dancing on its gills. Needless to say, Zim took this opportunity to make his hasty escape, quickly scooping up a giddy, noodle-coated GIR along the way, for GIR had begun to dance across the floor, doing what could have been the Macarena if one ignored the multitude of 'Saturday Night Fever' moves.  
  
Johnny's impression continued. She looked quite a bit like Devi, although he would personally have to say that Devi was lovelier, creamier, far more delightful than...he mentally smacked himself several times with a club.  
  
"Give me your blade!" repeated Gaz, her brown eyes opened dangerously. When she received no answer, her left eye twitched twice. "Let me break this down for you," she said carefully, forcing her fingers to stop curving into claws. "I. Have. Pest," she continued slowly. "You. Have. Blade. I want blade so I can RAM it into pest's body, causing pest's head to explode!"  
  
A moment of stunned silence followed.  
  
GIR, with great excitement, broke the silence. "I wanna blow m' head up, tooooooo!" it cried, waving its tiny arms about. "CanIcanIcanI, Mama?!"  
  
Gaz, noting that Johnny was still staring off into space, decided she didn't really need use of his machete. After all, God gave her hands, didn't he?   
  
Happy little dancing Devi's paraded throughout Johnny's head and he absently started doodling Happy Noodle Boy on the varnished table with his blade.  
  
  
  
Tenna was a little miffed that four new people had joined their cozy little group, but she figured it wasn't too bad, as they had just exited the 'Eat or Die' restaurant. She was more upset that her teriyaki had exploded before she had the chance to finish eating its heart-attack-inducing goodness. The thin, anorexic-looking young man with dark blue hair had called himself Johnny; she, being the omnipotent all-knowing she-god that she was, had immediately figured that he was Devi's One True Love. The matchmaking side of her brain was joyously going into overload.  
  
She was beginning to grow quite fond of hanging off of Dib's arm. It didn't matter that she'd known him for all of three hours, or that he seemed nervous on how to act around her. After all, there was the little fact that he was the one person she had ever told what she was really like. Everyone else could just go and think she was mentally stunted as an infant, dropped on her head in a freak 'Dad-dropped-the-baby-panic-panic' accident. And, of course, he was cute. The shallow part of her was content with that alone. Spooky liked Dib, in a grudging father-y sort of way, and that was a definite plus. Joy and Yummy Chocolate! She beamed happily, black spiky hair a bit limper than it had been when she had interrupted his peaceful sleep earlier.  
  
"So, why'd you come here to look for your mom?" she asked unexpectedly, Spooky squeeking quietly from where it was tucked in her waist-pouch. "I mean, this place doesn't really have anything special."  
  
Dib shrugged; or, in the least, he attempted to, as Tenna's arm was anchoring his down. "To be perfectly honest, I was just really worn out. I've been hopping around for about two months now and I figured this was as good a place as any to just stop and rent an apartment, using it as a sort of central base to research any possible links. I'm still trying to prove Zim's an alien and all, but...well, you know." He glanced down at her, his face almost pleading. "There was this missing piece. Everywhere I'd turn, there'd be these kids with a mom and a dad, and they'd be so damn happy it nearly made me sick. Sure, I had Dad and all," he spat the word 'Dad' out, "but he wasn't really ever there. All he ever cared about was his work and protecting humanity, and he was so obsessed with me becoming a little junior Professor Membrane that he never bothered to actually listen to me." He glanced away from Tenna, didn't want to see any sympathy she might have. "I considered myself a paranormal investigator from the time I was three and first discovered what they were. Dad chalked it off as insanity." A laugh, strangled as it was, broke out from his lips and he blinked rapidly. Damn it, he was not going to cry! "Do you know how much that hurt? To know my mother was never there, and that my dad thought I was crazy?"  
  
"Yes," Tenna said honestly, smiling strangely. "My parents sent me to a mental institution when I was fourteen, 'cause I still talked with Spooky. I tried to tell them what I told you earlier, but it only convinced them more that I was a," she paused, adopting a mysterious expression. "That I was...a craaaaazy lady!" She released his arm and made wide movements with her arms, crooking and unbending her fingers, making 'wooooo-wooooo' noises, dark eyes opened wide. Spooky squeeked resignedly.  
  
Dib couldn't help it; he laughed.   
  
"Since when did Dib act that way around she-monkeys?" Zim asked Gaz, his tone filled with suspicion and his eyes narrowed. "He is acting as if he has been bitten by this love insect you human apes obsess over!" He stared at Dib's back, a note of fear striking inside his chest. If Dib could fall to the love insect, then what could protect he, Zim, Ruler-to-Be of Earth? Sneaking a look at Gaz, he took a step away from her, keeping the pace, but widening the distance between the two.  
  
"He's insane," Gaz said simply, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Absently, she patted GIR's back and the tiny robot hanging over her shoulder, cradled in her arm, made a soft burping sound, then sighed contentedly, aquamarine eyes half-lidded happily.  
  
"Mama luvs me," GIR sighed again, beaming at Johnny, who was trying to figure out why Gaz looked so much like Devi.   
  
"I need a cherry freezy," he mumbled to himself. Yes, a nice, sweet, delicious BrainFreezy, cherry-flavored, and he'd freeze his brain real good, and then he could figure it out. BrainFreezies...mmmm...  
  
So, whilst Johnny all but drooled thinking of a nummy cherry BrainFreezy, Zim avoided Gaz like the black plague, and Gaz held GIR with the unconscious movements of a mother (though if anyone had said that to her face, odds were that they wouldn't have a face themselves in about four seconds), Dib and Tenna talked. And Spooky squeeked.  
  
"So your dad told you yo mama looked like your sister?" Tenna asked for clarification.  
  
|squeeeek|  
  
"Aw, Spooky, don't bug me about grammar! I'm talking to Dib!"  
  
|squeeksqueek|  
  
"Don't be so jealous!" She glared at Spooky for a moment, and then returned her attention to Dib, who was smirking at the skeleton. "Well?"  
  
"Yeah, that's all Dad ever told me," he shrugged, hands in his pockets, walking a bit closer to Tenna than he probably should have been.   
  
"So, who's your sister?" she pressed.  
  
He jerked his thumb back, pointing at Gaz. "Her," he stated simply.  
  
To anyone watching, they, if one separated the two from the rest of the odd group, made a contrasting duo. The tall, thin man was pale with sleek black hair and large glasses, dressed completely in black; he had a serious, almost no-nonsense air about him. The short, petite girl had slightly spiked black hair glinting from gel, her skin a dark brown that was complemented by her bright yellow outfit; her air was obviously excited and bubbly. The only thing they had visibly in common were the alien shirts they each wore. It fit the man perfectly, but nearly swallowed the girl despite her having tucked it in her yellow pants.  
  
To anyone watching, the girl scared the figurative shit out of the man when she screeched, clamping her tiny hands around his arm and shaking it excitedly.   
  
"My best friend!" she cried, causing the whole group to stop moving, everyone except for GIR staring blankly at her. "Your sister, the scary 'kill-the-damn-pest' lady! She looks like my best friend!" Dib continued to stare at her, uncomprehending. Tenna smacked his arm. "Gaz looks like Devi!" she howled.  
  
"Devi?" Johnny asked hopefully, deep eyes lighting up.  
  
"The hell?" Gaz demanded.  
  
"Mama, I luvs you forever and ever and ever," GIR cooed sweetly, hugging its thin metal arms around her neck.  
  
"Are you serious?" Dib all but gasped, because that would have been really cheesy. If he had gasped, that is.   
  
"Holy Irken God of Freaky Connections!" Zim pointed a gloved finger ahead, at a wispy, eerie figure of black. "Ms. Bitters!"  
  
Gaz's eyes popped open and Dib sucked in a sharp, sudden breath, momentarily forgetting what Tenna had just awkwardly spilled. Johnny and Tenna were both clueless.  
  
"I thought you humans were mortal!" Zim accused, eyes mere slits as he glared horrifically at his rival, feeling an uncomfortable ball of dread forming in his stomach. Or whatever Irkens had that passed for a stomach. Perhaps the mysterious, elusive squeedily spooch?  
  
"We are, Zim," Dib spoke calmly, eyes fixed on the figure as it frightened a tiny child. "Ms. Bitters is not human."  
  
"Ah," said Zim, intelligently.  
  
|squeeek squeeksqueek squeeeeeksqueeksqueeeek squeekeek squeek squeeksqueek|  
  
All stared at Spooky, still in Tenna's waist pouch. It stared back at them with its lifeless, dead doll's eyes...insert scary howling wind sound effects.  
  
"Spooky says that she is not a human, but, rather, a physical personification of pure, unadulterated evil set here on this plane of existence in order to find any and all threats to her species' existence and disarm the threats by any nonphysical means necessary," Tenna chirped, smiling cutely.  
  
More staring.  
  
"What?" she defended, slapping a hand over Spooky. "Spooky said so!"  
  
"Can we just leave?" Dib said, following a moment of continued silence and staring. "Ms. Bitters is just too damn scary, and I'd like to follow this lead you've presented us with."  
  
Tenna nodded understandingly, saying, innocently, "What?"  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Well, this chapter was longer than the first, but shorter than the second. Yippee-skippee! I meant to have Nny in this more, but I couldn't figure out to work it without taking away from the Dib/Tenna build-up. But do not fear! Our favorite homicidal maniac will have a larger role in chapter four! There will also be more Dib/Tenna talk, and maybe a dash of WAFF. WAFF's my lifeblood, and I have got to put it in soon or I'll make Spooky and GIR take over the world with a sponge and a rubber chicken!  
  
Again, I hope this chapter was pretty good, and I apologize for any OOC-ness. I'd also like to thank everyone IMMENSELY for their support about Tenna's speech in the last chapter. I really didn't know how it would come across. Were the monotonous speeches in this chappy okay? Is anybody reading these author's notes?   
  
Since I'm on the subject of opinions and all...  
  
How does everybody feel about Dib/Tenna? Does it bother anyone? (Personally, I like it, considering they are such opposites, but are slightly similar.) Should I make the fifth chapter long, considering I have yet to write a long chapter and the fourth is more than likely to stay about the same size as these three? Would anybody mind if I did a sequel of sorts, with a plot? After I finish this fic, of course! Please review!  
  
This fic is so much fun to write! I get to put in serious speeches and mix it with demented humor, and, next chappy, I get to throw in WAFF and homicidal maniacs desperate for forgiveness! Yay! Aren't you happy for me?  
  
22 reviews! Wow! I was hoping for ten reviews a chapter (but I'm not going to make that a requisite for a new chapter...that's not something I'd do), but this is so cool! Yes, I'm easily made happy. How'd you know?  
  
Nny plushie says: 'Cherry BrainFreezies are good for the soul. So are reviews.']  
  
|Thank-yous and Spooky dolls to:  
Chien [well, now we know why he's in the city!], Dragon from the Black Lagoon [yes! Nny, and Gir, and Spooky! Spooky's role keeps expanding and expanding...], DeadLegato [awwww...it's just that I've never really been able to write long chapters...so, did you like it? And thanks for reviewing 'White Wedding'!], Kami and Daegon [yes! Stare at the INSANITY! *cackles*], MiriahoftheWind [GIR's my cartoon soulmate! Dontcha just wanna hug it?], R.LemurGirl [glad you like it! And I agree: amusement is the rule. And fluff...], Kat23a [you've just explained my entire social life! Holy monkeybait!], ArmandLeg [he is lucky indeed that Gaz did not kill him. Glad you liked chappy 2!], Dib Girl [here it is!], Pip-aka-Frodoluver [the chicken knows all! O, Wise Chicken, do you like this chapter? Is it pleasing to you? Please tell!], True Locket [hi, Black Kats! I'm Palla! So, you know, what to do like to do? I like reading and writing!], Gir's Cupcake [aw, that's where GIR's cupcake went! Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I wanted to meet the squirrel/tadpole hybrids...], Poodge [enjoy, enjoy, enjoy!], Maniacal Dragon [YES!!! Somebody thinks the relationship is believable!], and Haria [continuing!].| 


	4. Wily Women - Why Dib Didn't Have A Chanc...

Talk To Spooky!  
*  
Chapter Four: Wily Women - Why Dib Didn't Have A Chance  
  
The clock by Devi's bed read a simple '12:00 PM' and, while most people would be eating lunch at noon on a Saturday or mocking a badly dubbed Japanese show amidst Saturday morning/noon cartoon watching, she was currently dozing, sprawled across her cluttered, lumpy sofa, a few blue dots remaining on her face from the 'Smurf' incident. Her half-finished painting had been abandoned, mostly due to frustration, Tenna breaking a leg off of her favorite stool, and the fact that her painting Johnny just plain pissed her off. So, in any case, she was asleep on her couch, mouth hanging open slightly. She wasn't exactly the picture of a sleeping beauty, nor was she overwhelmingly innocent looking in her sleep. Technically, she just looked like she had fallen sleep whilst irritated.  
  
Thusly, her doorbell being pressed about ten times in quick succession was not a very wise maneuver.   
  
"Damn it!" she snarled, sitting up sharply, eyes feral and dusky purple hair tangled. Happy she was not. She was going to kill whoever was behind that door!  
  
With such kind feelings in her loving, gentle heart, she swung her legs over the couch and stood up, stomping over to her door. The person below her, replacing the burnt-to-a-toasty-crisp psychic-fat lady, just sighed and buried himself deeper in his chair as he continued to watch half-naked college women on MTV, thankful that his wife was out shopping.  
  
Her security system, placed intelligently by her door, stated, happily: 'Unknown group of male and female organisms. Arm self with horrendously huge butcher knife. Have a nice day!' She, of course, had stopped reading the moment she read 'male,' opting instead to completely forgo the helpful protective suggestion of the system and simply grabbed her Heavy-Duty-Jumbolike-Jumbo-Size-Get-The-Hell-Away-You-Perverted-Bastard Can-o-Mace. Shaking it a few times for good luck, she leaned away from the door and pulled the latches out, sliding open the dead bolt. Very carefully, she turned the doorknob and threw her door open.  
  
Devi saw Johnny.  
  
Devi did not see the rest of the group.  
  
Devi reacted by spraying enough mace into Johnny's eyes to blind half of a third-world country.  
  
"Burrrrrniiiiiiinnnnng!" Johnny howled, slapping his hands over his eyes and staggering backwards into the opposite wall, before crumpling to the floor as he scrubbed at his eyes. "Eyeballs on fire!! Stop, drop, roll! Stop, drop, roll!" He proceeded to do so, still wailing.  
  
Dib and Zim both took very large steps away from Devi, Dib pushing his glasses closer to his eyes protectively and Zim attempting to look as non-threatening as he possibly could.  
  
"Devi!" Tenna gasped, clasping her hand to her heart. "How could you do that to your boyfriend?"  
  
Johnny had ceased wailing and settled for whimpering, pulling his back up against the opposite wall, rubbing at his eyes, cheeks wet.   
  
"My boyfriend?!" Devi's eye twitched. "If he told you we were dating, I swear to God I'm going to make him eat the damn mace!"  
  
One homicidal maniac snapped his eyes open and focused on what he assumed was Devi's legs. "Please!" he all but sobbed, throwing himself at the legs. "I've said I'm sorry so many times! Don't hurt me!"  
  
Zim whacked Johnny against the head, trying to pull his legs out of the thin man's grip. "Release me, foul stink-monkey!" he bellowed.  
  
Johnny blinked, vision still blurry, and unwrapped his arms from about Zim's legs. "Remind me that I owe you a few smacks with a knife," he said conversationally to the alien, who took a step away from Johnny this time.  
  
"What do you want?" Devi asked Tenna, tone weary.   
  
Tenna beamed, squeezing Spooky to her chest and grabbing Dib's arm once more as he eyed Devi. "I gotsa funny thing to tell ya! This is Dib, the new neighbor," Dib smiled weakly and waved, "and that's his sister, Gaz, with the robot, GIR." Gaz squinted at Devi, face growing reflective as GIR cooed, patting the Membrane girl's hair and braiding it sloppily. Devi made no comment, settling for simply staring at Gaz, and her friend released Dib's arm, snagging Devi's arm and Gaz's. "Do you not see the resemblance?" she cried, dark eyes sparkling abnormally. "You are like sisters who were separated at birth by a monkey-doctor who was sadly high on crack! Seeeee the resemblance! Worrrrrship the resemblance!" She paused, let go of both arms, and turned to face Dib. "I wanna chocolate sundae!"  
  
"Why don't you all come in?" Devi offered in an almost dazed voice, motioning towards her apartment. Tenna latched herself to Dib again, hauling him inside even as he stared at Devi, Spooky squeeking something or other. Gaz, apparently unfazed, stalked in, GIR still braiding her hair as it sang a disturbing remix of every song in 'Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame,' followed by Zim, who was eyeing Johnny with an odd look on his face. Said homicidal maniac clutched at the doorframe and stumbled in, blinking blearily. He heard the door close behind him and turned to a rather blurry-appearing Devi.   
  
"Devi, I'm sincerely sorry that I attempted to gut you," he began, unconsciously adopting a puppy-dog face he had seen on a particularly slutty torture victim, "and I suppose it was my fault, to a degree, but it was primarily due to the doughboy's corruptive influence. See, I was easily swayed, mostly because I have problems with intimacy and, through past experience, I have found that the better thing in my life hardly ever last, and you are, undoubtedly, one of the most wonderful things in my life. Please, at least consider my apology, and if you feel the pressing need to bend my limbs into horrendous, unnatural pretzel shapes that God did not intend for the human body to bend into, I submit myself to your vengeance." That said, Johnny reached out, hoping she wouldn't do something like bite his hand off or break his nose, and touched her cheek. Her cheek slid to the floor and he blinked several times, mouth dropping and eyes bugging. "Oh my God!" he yelped, diving to the floor to pick up her cheek, which, as he neared it, suddenly became a Creed CD.  
  
"So, are you done sweet-talking my CD stacker?" Devi asked dryly somewhere to his left.  
  
Johnny squinted and noted that it was indeed a CD stacker. He hit himself in the face with the Creed CD.  
  
"Awww," Tenna sighed, tone suddenly mushy sounding, "he's gonna let you do horrible things to him!" To Dib's shock, she glomped his side, sighing again with a romantic air. "What could be sweeter and more romantic than that?"  
  
As Johnny poked the Creed CD and generally wished he was somewhere far, far away, like Hell or skool (not that there's much of a difference), Devi slowly turned around to face Tenna, setting her really-long-name-brand Can-o-Mace on a small table. "How about," she started carefully, "not trying to kill me on an otherwise perfect date, shattering all trust in men I had while simultaneously dashing all dreams that I had for a future together? That sounds sweeter and more romantic to me."  
  
Several thoughts ran through Tenna's head, from how to react to whether or not it was possible to eat too much chocolate. Ultimately, she responded, very sensitively, with such: "You need to get out more!"  
  
Devi's eye twitched and, for a brief moment of clarity and intelligence, GIR noted that the scary lady's twitchy eye looked like its Mama's twitchy eye. Then, joyfully, it returned to caterwauling and plucking at Gaz's hair.  
  
"Go out?" Dib asked aloud, confused as to how that could resolve the current situation involving a twitching Devi and a mortified lunatic.  
  
"Really?" Tenna gasped, delighted. "How about tomorrow?"  
  
"Tomorrow?" Dib echoed, burrowing his eyebrows together in confusion. Down on the floor, Johnny looked up and frantically waved his arms in wide gestures, mouthing 'no!'  
  
"Eight at night?"  
  
"Eight?" Dib continued hopelessly as Johnny's arm gestures grew even wider.  
  
"No flowers?" she said shyly.  
  
"Flowers?" Johnny began picking carpet lint and hurling it at Dib.  
  
"You'll bring flowers for me!" she gasped again, eyes shining beautifully and hands clasping under her chin as Spooky squeeked an unintelligible warning to Dib.  
  
"What?"  
  
"It's a date!" she proclaimed happily and Dib's face went stark white.  
  
Then, as Tenna chattered to Spooky about what to wear and what not, and Johnny tossed the Creed CD at Dib, which resulted in Devi kicking her ex in the hip, Dib fainted.   
  
Wait. That doesn't sound manly, does it?  
  
Dib lost consciousness.  
  
  
  
"This is my mom's old photo album," Devi explained, pulling out a large, dusty cloth binder from the top of a messy bookshelf. Blowing gently across the top, she sent a billow of ancient dust up in a little light brown cloud. "I figure, since you said your dad never showed you or your brother over there any pictures, this might be some help." Gaz nodded from where she was sitting on the couch, a lightly snoring GIR curled up in her lap; it was cute, how mother-and-baby it looked. Potentially fatal for anyone who dare mention it, but cute. "Anyway." Devi stepped off of the stepladder and onto the arm of her couch, teetering momentarily before regaining her balance and lightly jumping to the floor. She sat on the couch beside Gaz and opened the cover.  
  
Johnny leaned over the back of the couch a little and, though he noticed that Devi tensed a little, wasn't ordered to leave or blinded. He was very thankful that she hadn't used any more mace on him; he was beginning to be able to recognize colors again. Devi's current hair color, he noted, was her natural one, and he quite liked it. It was such a glorious shade of purp---  
  
"Nny, get your nose out of my hair, now!"  
  
GIR's tiny silver legs kicked softly a few times and it settled down again, antennae bending slightly against Gaz's arm. Gaz grinned to herself as she watched Tenna fussing over a still-unconscious Dib, patting his ebon hair every now and then and straightening the blanket, her toy skeleton squeeking advice from its perch on the pillow beside Dib's head. Zim was silently laughing to himself, no doubt relishing the fact that his adversary had been shocked into passing out by a woman and he had not. Gaz had half a mind to correct that...  
  
"Okay," Devi's voice pulled her back from her thoughts. "This is my mother and my aunt," she placed a finger on a somewhat aged color photograph. Two identical women with dark purple hair, both with bright, relaxed faces yet smirking smiles, looked out from it, posing in front of a large mural, somewhere in Brooklyn, NYC, according to the neatly penned label under it, the whiteness of the label browned by age. "They were twins, obviously, and I was about seven when Aunt Ida died." She flipped several pages forward to reveal a picture that was both familiar and not to Gaz. Both women were in it again, but a group of others were with the two of them as well: a tall man with blonde hair beside one and a man with pitch black hair in a scythe-like style that could only be Professor Membrane. Two children were in it, too: a six-year old Devi with purple hair in Pippi Longstocking-esque pigtails, and a two-year old boy with black hair that mirrored the style of the younger Professor Membrane. The woman holding the boy was very much pregnant, and quite happy with it. "This was the last time I saw Aunt Ida and Uncle Jimmy." Devi laughed, dryly. "Needless to say, it was also the last time I ever saw Dib." She glanced over at Tenna repositioning covers over Dib's shoulders where he was resting in a small armchair.   
  
"What was my mother like?" Gaz asked quietly, for once not appearing as if she was going to commit some horrible crime or as if she wanted to be left alone.  
  
Johnny's heart ached for Devi and he leaned forward to comfort her---  
  
"Nose out of my hair!"  
  
Johnny backed off.  
  
Devi shrugged. "From what I can remember of Aunt Ida, she was always pulling some sort of prank. She hated seriousness and, if she were here right now, she'd probably gag. It was always kind of weird how much she and Uncle Jimmy loved each other: she was all laughs and April Fool's jokes, and he was always serious and dedicated to his work. She doted on Dib, and Mom swore, up and down, that it was Aunt Ida's wish to meet Spock - or Leonard Nimoy - from Star Trek that started his obsession for weird stuff. Probably didn't help that I told him he was abducted by aliens as a baby and used for freakish experiments."  
  
"That's why he says he was abducted by aliens," Gaz muttered.  
  
"To be honest," Devi grinned, "I was trying to make him cry. He might have been really wimpy and he never played any games with us older kids, but he wouldn't cry if you broke his leg. Even when he was five months old at the Christmas reunion, he would get so excited when things about the Bermuda Triangle or Bigfoot came on. We found that whenever he got cranky, we'd just pop in an old Star Trek movie and he'd shut up right away. It was pretty cool, in a disturbing way." She thumbed back a few pages, and then pointed at a photograph of the same group of people. There were a few differences, such as that Devi was not in it and Ida was most definitely not pregnant. Baby Dib was clutching an ET toy to his tiny chest as 'Jimmy' looked a bit put out. "Uncle Jimmy never liked it. He wanted Dib to be a scientist and a realist, so he was a little upset that Dib's first word wasn't 'centrifugal' but 'poltergeist.' Never mind that most ten month olds kids can't even start saying 'poltergeist,' or, for that matter, 'centrifugal.'   
  
"Aunt Ida, of course, was delighted. She told Uncle Jimmy to shut his damn mouth and get the hell over it. Said their next kid could be the family scientist." Devi trailed off, glancing at Gaz. "By any remote chance..."  
  
"On Spring Break from college," Gaz supplied. "Working on a master's degree in physics and chemistry."  
  
"Damn," Devi grinned.  
  
In the corner, Johnny sulked.  
  
  
  
Consciousness had returned with a large, pointy stick that it jabbed sadistically into Dib's brain anywhere from thirteen to seventy-nine times. However many times Consciousness poked him into the world of the waking, the important thing was the fact that he awoke with a splitting headache and an inane desire for a time machine. Dib opened his eyes and found himself staring straight at a tiny skull pressed up against his face. With a shriek, he jerked away, then flushed to see that it was only Spooky. Wrinkling his forehead, he wondered why on earth he was covered in a thick blanket on a rather comfy armchair, with Spooky resting on a fluffy pillow his head had been lying on. Thinking back, he skipped past the 'Eat or Die' restaurant, the multiple serious conversations, and the 'Johnny-getting-blinded' incident, heading straight to the---  
  
"Oh, noooo," he moaned, dropping his head back onto the pillow and despairingly looking to Spooky for guidance. "Spooky, why did I let myself get suckered so easily? Why wasn't my high IQ good enough to catch what she was doing? Why the hell didn't I ever go on a damn date in high school?!"  
  
|squeek squeeeeeksqueeksqueeek squeekeeeek squeekysqueek|  
  
"Well, thank you very much, Spooky, I'll keep that in mind next time," Dib remarked sarcastically.  
  
"I can answer all of those, disgusting Dib-monkey!" Zim volunteered kindly. Well, truthfully, it was more maliciously than kindly... "One! You are a moronic earth worm-baby! Two! You are a moronic earth worm-baby! Three!"  
  
"You are a moronic earth worm-baby?" Dib suggested, expression both bored and slightly angry.  
  
"No," Zim said haughtily. "It is because you fear the female earth creature. They bring shivers down your spine and cause you to blush and stammer about them, like the moronic earth worm-baby you are!"  
  
"Actually, most people consider that to be a sign of the jitters or, more positively, that the blushing-and-stammering person likes you!" a cheerful female voice chirped beside Dib, who almost fell out of the chair, eyes widening.  
  
Zim studied Dib's appearance as Tenna placed her hand on his forehead to check his temperature.   
  
"I rest my case," the alien stated smugly.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Well, this one was longer than the first chapter, at least...see the little review thingie-thinglike-thing down there? It calls you, does it not? You cannot resist its calling-call-ness, can you? Give in to the call of the review button...give in...  
  
Hee. This was an okay chapter, I suppose. My personal favorite part is when Johnny's blind in the hallway. His apology to the CD stacker was fun, too, especially to write. I have no idea if he's OOC. Sheesh, he is so freakin' hard to WRITE!   
  
Anyway, you can probably guess that the next chapter is going to be Dib and Tenna's date. You'd be absolutely correct. I have a scene planned out for it already; to be honest, I've had the scene floating in my head since I started the second chapter. Sadly, the fifth chapter will be the last...unless I decide to write some messed up Meanwhile or something. Or an epilogue. Whatever.  
  
On the home front, just for a babbling thingy that nobody's going to read, the school play that I was assistant director for (the director was our teacher) was a, forgive my British cliché, "smashing success!" Heh. I also had to do all the sound effects, so I was really stressing out, considering the prop guy couldn't do his job alone so I had to help with the props, too. But now I feel really great about it! If I decide to not just be a writer and a comicbook writer/illustrator, I'll try my hand at directing.  
  
Nny plushie says: 'Mace is bad. Reviews are good. So, please review and don't spray mace in Palla's eyes. She's weird enough already.']  
  
|Thank-yous and Spooky Dolls/Translators to: NnYsRaGDoll (yes, ma'am! *salutes*), Dib Girl (actually, Devi being Prof Membrane's wife is in another story I've been writing and not posting; I probably should clarify ages...basically, everybody's in their twenties...except for Zim, 'cause I have no idea how freakin' old he is...but he looks twenty-ish in this fic!), Kat23a (can't...stop...laughing! *crying from laughing so hard* I'm guessing you liked the chapter! Hope your fingers feel better...oh, and WAFF stands for Warm And Fuzzy Feeling, which didn't come into play in this chapter), Kami and Daegon (glad you liked it! Insanity is good, don't worry. And now you have a Spooky Translator! Yay!), ArmAndLeg (I aim to please. And write what I want to, as well...sadly, Ch. 4 had OOC by the bucket...ergh!), Ragamuffin Girl (thanks for reviewing! I'm sincerely glad you liked it. The next chapter will be so much fun...), Devilish Kurumi AKA Ruffaluff (more right here!), Invader Kim (yes...stare at more ficcy-ness! Fun, ne?), Chien (I'm writing clfifhangers? Holy monkeybait...I didn't even notice that! I just kinda stop writing...but, if it keeps you around! *winks*), and Amethyst Soul (wow! *blushes* You like it! Well, it's a huge deal of fun to write and I'm incredibly flattered that you like it. Yay! I have a demented sense of humor! And, if you can't tell, I really like your fanfiction, Amethyst Soul-san! I jsut enver ahve time to review...*smacks self in face*). Thankee! The thank-you section is getting looooong...| 


	5. [5A] When Maniacs Attack - Why Not To Tr...

Talk To Spooky!  
*  
Chapter Five-A: When Maniacs Attack - Why Not To Trip Over A Toilet   
  
"Damn it! This makes me look so friggin' fat!" With an upset look on her face, Tenna tossed the fuzzy black sweater to the cluttered floor of her apartment, a sense of worry gnawing at her gut. "Ugh...I feel like a tapeworm is snacking away at the scrumpy meat of m' stomach..." She placed a hand on her bare, dark abdomen and frowned, jet black hair hanging limply around her face as she threw herself onto her eerily clean sofa, legs dangling off the back of it. Her black jogging pants were creased and, aside from her yellow sports bra, the only thing she was wearing. "I have no idea what I'm going to wear!"  
  
"Well," Devi started dryly, nudging a pile of Bruce Lee movies out of her way carefully, well knowing her best friend's fetish for martial arts films, "I think we can clearly cross out the jogging pants you're wearing at the moment. I doubt any self-respecting fancy restaurant would let you in wearing those." As Tenna started to protest, sitting up, she held her hand up in a 'stop' motion. "Come on, get real," she said pointedly. "You know as well as I do that there will be some kind of dress code."  
  
Tenna sighed and sank back down, playing with a few strands of her short hair. "Man, I don't want to screw this up." She glanced across at Gaz, who was curled up in an embarrassingly soft easy-chair that sank to the floor, her fingers flying over the buttons on her GameSlave VII. "I mean, he's the first guy I've ever been comfortable enough around to be myself. Kind of like I can tell him anything."  
  
Devi snorted and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, and look where that got me," she muttered.  
  
Her attention characteristically switching unexpectedly, Tenna turned her head towards the frowning woman. "Johnny doesn't seem too bad," she said encouragingly, sitting up and plopping Spooky into her lap, "why don't you like him?"  
  
The taller of the two stared at her, then looked at Gaz, who still wasn't paying attention, then at GIR quietly coloring outside the lines in a 'Beauty and the Beast' coloring book. "Okay," she began calmly, mentally ordering herself to keep from smacking Tenna several swift blows across the top of her head, "let me put this in terms you'll understand."  
  
Tenna frowned minutely.  
  
"In most cultures," Devi continued, "an attempt to disembowel someone after you try to kiss them is generally consider a huge, whoppin' 'I-hate-your-guts-so-now-I'll-spill-them.' Y'know, like a really 'Silence of the Lambs' type of rejection."  
  
Blinking and crossing her legs, mindful to keep from hurting Spooky, Tenna appeared to be in deep thought for a moment. "Oh," she said thoughtfully. "Um...you need to get out more?"  
  
Devi threw up her hands and, stumbling over a copy of 'Rumble in the Bronx' lying next to a worn paperback of 'Great Expectations,' paced over to the unidentifiable pile of clothing she hoped was Tenna's cleaned clothes. Sticking her hand in it, she grabbed on to the first thing she closed her fist around, yanking it out and throwing it at Tenna's head, where it wrapped itself around her face. Ignoring her screams of "The pants are attacking me! The pants!!" and the sound of struggling, she removed her hand and spied the alien shirt her currently involved best friend had 'borrowed' from Dib. Pfft, yeah, right.   
  
"Why don't you wear the alien shirt?" she suggested, idly tossing that over her shoulder as well.  
  
Tenna, having finally defeated the Pants Menace, looked up, in horror, to find that a shirt was now lunging at her. "Oh, shiiiii---" The shirt smacked her face and she grappled with it, much to the utter entertainment of GIR. Considering she never finished her cry, it can be assumed that she was either going to say 'oh shit' or 'oh shirts of DOOM.'   
  
"For the love of Irk!" Gaz exploded, setting her GameSlave VII down with great tenderness before stalking over to the flailing girl-woman and ripping the shirt off of her face. "I can't play my game with you shrieking every other minute!" She paused, holding the shirt in her hands as Tenna and Devi stared at her; GIR had grown bored with the proceedings and was currently attempting to arm wrestle the blender in the adjoined kitchenette. "I've obviously been spending far too much time with Zim!" she finished, dropping the shirt on Tenna's head and stiffly walking back to the chair, elegantly picking up her GameSlave VII and resuming her frenzied, bloodshot-eyed assault on vampire piggies.   
  
A sudden whoop of "Oh yeah! I did it! Ohhhhh yeah!" coming from the kitchenette alerted all that, somehow, someway, GIR had defeated the blender in arm wrestle battle. Spooky made an inquisitive squeek from its position in Tenna's lap and she patted its head absently.  
  
"It's perfectly possible, Spooky," she assured it. "I've arm wrestled the toaster fives times before. Damn thing wins every time."  
  
Gaz hunched her shoulders in order to block, or at least muffle, the noise. How the hell was she supposed to rain horribly stake-like vengeance upon the empire of the doomed, freakish vampire piggies if she couldn't concentrate?! Curse the vampire piggies and their vampire piggy-like piggy-ness!  
  
Devi decided she wasn't going to ask because she really didn't need to know how one arm wrestles with cooking appliances, and instead settled for revenge. Revenge is cool!   
  
"So, in payback for all the times you've grilled me before a date," Devi stated sweetly, perching herself on the sofa arm as Tenna popped her head through the shirt, "I've decided to ask you all sorts of meaningless questions."  
  
"Okey dokey!" the girl on the sofa chirped. "Bring it on, woman!"  
  
Crap. "So, what's your favorite part in a relationship?" Devi questioned, wishing she had a gift for inane questions.  
  
Tenna thought for a few seconds, then, cheerfully, answered. "Hot kinky monkey sex!"  
  
Gaz, suddenly gaining a mental image she absolutely never wanted, fell out of the chair, clawing at her own head. "Mental image! Mental image! Curse youuuuuu!"  
  
Devi blinked, mouth slightly open, a look of 'holy-monkey-crap' on her face. That was simply not something one envisioned Tenna taking part in, and she was pretty confident that her view on her best friend was somewhat skewed.  
  
"Aw, I'm kidding!" she giggled, wriggling into her dark red pants and buttoning them, a quiet 'zzzzzpuh' sound emanating from the zipper as she closed it. "You two seriously need to get out more often." Noticing Devi's irritated glare, she stuck her tongue out and flashed a grin. "I've never been in a serious relationship before, so I don't really know what to expect," she explained as normally as was naturally possible for her.   
  
The older of the two cousins swung her legs over the back of the couch, propping her arms up on her knees as she mentally gave up on attempting to bug Tenna. Moronic questioning was definitely not in the artist's blood. "Any prospects?" she questioned.  
  
Tenna tapped her chin a few times with her index finger before quickly jerking the shirt on over her head and winking broadly to both purple-haired women. "He's got a great personality and a really cool job," she confided. "And," she continued as an afterthought, "he's got a cute butt."  
  
Gaz choked, brown eyes bulging. "Cease this conversation at once," she all but snarled, "before I have to tie your reproductive organs into balloon animal shapes!"  
  
"Wouldn't that hurt?" Tenna wondered aloud.  
  
"Go gel your hair already!" Devi laughed, shoving her dark-skinned best friend off the couch.  
  
"Damn!" howled Tenna the instant before her face became stuck in her jogging pants.  
  
  
  
"Zim, I swear to God I'm going to shoot you, autopsy be damned, if you don't stop laughing RIGHT NOW!"  
  
The Irken soldier paused in his cackling at a rather flustered-looking Dib, as if mulling over the offer. Then, with the great maturity all Invaders possess in large amounts, he resumed his mad laughter. "How can I stop?" he inquired between laughs. "You strongly resemble an over-heated beet vegetable!" Zim proceeded to laugh uncontrollably some more.  
  
Dib scowled and turned his attention back to the mirror hanging over the bathroom sink, forcing himself to ignore Zim, in the living space. "I can't believe I'm doing this," he muttered, running his hands through his hair, for once mussed and hanging loosely about his face instead of in its normal gelled style. "I have no idea what to do," he moaned, gripping the edge of the sink basin and staring at his own anxious brown eyes.  
  
"I can tell you what not to do," Johnny offered from his crouching position on the ceiling, feet propped against the wall and arms spread out to balance his self. Dib started, yelped, and tripped over the toilet as he stumbled back, resulting in his breaking down the curtains and the brass bar holding them up. His head, due to physics and the donkey, whipped back and smacked against a bar of unopened soap. Johnny, unconcerned, dropped from the ceiling, landing lightly on his booted feet and sheathing a knife in his trenchcoat's dark folds, tossing a now scored and torn boot that had belonged to Dib to the linoleum floor. "Avoid 'immortalizing the moment,'" he said seriously, standing straight in all his six-foot-something glory.   
  
"How long have you been standing there?" Dib demanded, sitting up and rubbing at the back of his head while kicking the curtains and the bar off of his legs. "And what in the name of Nessie do you mean, 'immortalizing the moment?'"  
  
Suddenly, without warning, Dib found Johnny's face a mere inch from his own and the Membrane boy had a moment to wonder how the hell the blue-haired man had been able to friggin' move that fast.   
  
"Whatever you do," Johnny said quietly, "do NOT attempt to kill her."  
  
"...Huh?" Dib asked intelligently. "What do you mean?"  
  
Johnny popped his fist against the top of the other man's head; Dib yelped again. "Do!" he yelled, smacking him lightly again. "Not! Attempt! To! Kill! Her!"  
  
"Okay! Will you just stop that?!"  
  
"All right," the homicidal man shrugged and strolled out of the bathroom, whistling cheerfully to himself.   
  
Dib could see Zim fall out of the chair laughing, and he frowned angrily, lifting himself up out of the bathtub. "This is so embarrassing," he mumbled, brushing the knees of his black pants and checking that his alien shirt was tucked in. Nervously, he glanced at his reflection and winced at the pale color of his skin; his arms were a shade or two paler than the rest of him and he cursed the years of wearing a trenchcoat and wished he could wear one tonight. Heaven forbid he have tan skin like Johnny.  
  
"I'm going," he announced to the convulsing figure of Zim and the anorexic-thin shape of Johnny idly twirling a few knives around. Neither seemed to hear him (Zim was still laughing, even if it was more wheezing and coughing than actual superior cackling by this point) and he scowled again. "I said, I'm going!"  
  
Zim slowly uncurled from his position on the floor, still looking severely amused, and adjusted the position of his Presley-style wig. Don't laugh.  
  
"So...'bye," he finished lamely, then moved hastily to the door.  
  
"Flowers!" Johnny reminded.  
  
"Thanks," he said sheepishly, snatching up the small bouquet of lilies from the counter. "Almost forgot." With that, he exited the front door and closed it behind him.  
  
"I...I feel so proud," said Johnny in a distant voice, before he wondered if he'd accidentally hit his head against something. What the Barbaric Lex Luthor Hell was he saying?  
  
Zim gave him an odd look and returned to his chair, shaking his head slightly. To the maniac's surprise, a strange, pink microphone shot from the green-skinned man's backpack, extending before the alien's face and pausing there. A brief hologram of GIR appeared.  
  
"GIR!" Zim commanded. "Report what is going on at the Tenna girl's apartment once the freakishly disturbing one has left with Dib the Moron!"  
  
The fuzzy GIR hologram flickered red and it saluted. A self-satisfied smirk appeared on Zim's face as the microphone-like thing snapped back into his backpack, sealing itself up.  
  
"You can't be permitted to spy on Devi!" Johnny cried, unsheathing a rather scary-looking knife.  
  
"Down, stink-monkey!" Zim replied, leaping to his feet on the back of the chair. "I seek information for blackmail! Blackmail is nice!!" He struck what he perceived to be an intimidating pose, overbalanced, and fell behind the chair, which promptly toppled in the opposite direction.  
  
Johnny thought for a moment and shrugged, replacing the knife in his trenchcoat. "Okey-dokey."  
  
  
  
Gaz had to admit that for a brainless nitwit with no sexual experience, Dib handled his picking up Tenna rather well. For a brainless nitwit with no sexual experience. Of course, this was if one ignored the blushing, stammering, and frequent 'um's. Still, Tenna hadn't seemed to mind (even if Spooky had squeeked in a grumbling sort of way, reminding Gaz a bit of her father's initial reaction on her first, and last, date) and Dib had seemed to be honest in his shy greeting. Hell, it was downright cute. In a disturbing, freakish way.  
  
Devi broke off from her tries to clear a path across the floor of Tenna's apartment as GIR started talking quietly to itself from its perch on the edge of the couch's arm, kicking its tiny silver legs back and forth. "How cute," she smiled, unusually gentle, "GIR's talking to itself."  
  
Gaz looked up from her game and listened to the soft mutterings. As she listened and Devi watched, her eyes grew wide, then narrowed dangerously. Snapping her GameSlave VII off without bothering to save, she dropped the piece of technology in the chair and bolted from the apartment, vanishing down the hall. Devi blinked, opened her mouth, and then slowly walked to the swinging door.  
  
There was the loud banging sound of a door being kicked in, most likely Dib's, and it was followed by an outraged cry sounding rather like Johnny.  
  
Zim's voice could be heard loudly proclaiming, with great love for all, "Oh, SHIT!!"  
  
"That's my knife!" Johnny protested.  
  
"Now, Gaz," Zim's voice continued nervously, "let's think this over logically and calmly! Don't stick that there!"  
  
"That can not be legal!" came Johnny's voice, shocked in tone. There was a pause. "Actually, that isn't too bad. You could probably use some practice, but that's not bad. You're a natural, aren't you?"  
  
Devi looked like most eleven-year olds do when forced to watch reproduction videos in science involving dancing vaginas and other things that really shouldn't be discussed. Slowly, she closed the door and stiffly crossed the floor to the couch, seating herself beside GIR, who had turned the TV on and was watching something that looked like another Terminator movie.  
  
"I love dis show," GIR sighed happily.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
[Aiya, I know I said there would only be one more chapter left, but chapter five was getting so long! I suppose this is Part A of 5; the last part, all Dib/Tenna, will be up before the end of the week.   
  
Seeing as there were so many reviewers wondering if Gaz or Johnny would win in a fight, I'd have to go with the suggestion that the Earth would blow up. I'd be laughing the entire time, too...  
  
Don't have too much to say, other than: why is Johnny so hard to write?! Curses!   
  
Sorry I didn't have any Nny/Devi. I know, I'm sad, too. But I am writing a parody of the movie 'Clue' inspired a great deal by a JtHM/IZ 'Clue' pic at Shades of Insanity (www.geocities.com/ifsjthm). Nny as Wadsworth and Devi as Mrs. White. I have always thought Mrs. White and Wadsworth should have gotten together, even when I was five and seeing it for the first time...  
  
The reproductive videos part at the end is something I really don't know about. I'm the lucky girl who got to skip the 'body, sex, and you' movies because my mom opted me out. Heheheh...  
  
Eh. Well. Please review! (Whoa! 50+ reviews for this fic?! Holy mongoose...)  
  
Nny plushie says: Review, damn it! Obey the expletive!]  
  
|Yay! Reviews! So, just for ya'll, a GIR dolly to keep Spooky company! Here goes: Amethyst Soul (I can't shake the thought that this part was pretty bad...seeing as you seem to have enjoyed the previous, how was this one? Reviews are like waffles for the soul...I love waffles!), Kami and Daegon (worship the OOC-ness! Hi, Spooky!), Dragon from the Black Lagoon (wrote more! *cowers* Don't hurt meeeee...), Invader Kim (cool! I'm original! Isn't that spiffy, Ryan! *proceeds to talk to her personal voice-in-the-head*), ArmAndLeg (wasn't that fun? Heheh. I liked writing the mace part...), Twitchy (those were probably the parts I had the most fun writing!), Maniacal Dragon (if you keep readin'! *winks* Ooh, you reviewed twice! Cool!), Black Silver (cool name! I was going to call Prof Membrane 'Mortimer,' but I thought it would be funny and sort of ironic if his name was just plain old 'Jimmy'), Kat23a (your reviews always crack me up! It's completely unexpected if his name is Jimmy, isn't it?), Tinkerbell (sadly, I don't feel that this part was funny at all...it's mostly a filler thingie. People are complimenting me so much! *blushes*), Devilish Kurumi AKA Ruffaluff (I'm sorrrrryyyyy! *wails* I couldn't put Devi/Nny in! If the next chapter is completely Dib/Tenna, is that okay? I hope so! Plus, I'm making the JtHM/IZ 'Clue' parody, and that'll have 'Denny' in it. That's clever; 'Denny.'), Peacemaker Aqua (yay! Another Dib/Tenna supporter!), Poodge (don't worship me! *looks frantic* My best friend will find out and then she'll never let me say my writing sucks! She does scary things when I insult myself...but! I'm really glad you're enjoying this!), Galadriel Weasley (Draco/Ginny! Frodo/Galadriel! Um...sorry. *sweatdrops* I want to go on a date with Dib, too! Although, personally, I'd like to go out with Zim's computer; darn thing's so funny. I'm pretty sure some girl would ask Dib out, but the 'no dates' thing worked better for the fic...*twitches* Down, Dib/Zita side! Down!), Dib Girl (does it hurt when your head explodes? It does when mine goes explody...anyway, new chapter up for you to reeeeeead!), and Gir's Girl (thinking of the children, ma'am! I luv Squee...). GIR dollies for you alllllll!| 


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